Online video marketing is a fractured, tortured thing at times. Often, a lot of focus is put on social media marketing but it seems that might not be the best place to put the onus of you online video marketing. In a recent survey Ascend2 found that the most effective online video marketing channels... are NOT social media sites. At least not for the survey respondents.

Methodology

Just so you get some perspective of the numbers, I offer to you Ascend2's methodology for the results.

Ascend2 and our Research Partners fielded the Video Marketing Survey and completed interviews with 398 marketing and sales decision-makers and practitioners from around the world. Ascend2 and our Research Partners fielded the Video Marketing Survey and completed interviews with 398 marketing and sales decision-makers and practitioners from around the world. We thank these busy professionals for sharing their valuable insights with you.

In terms of who and from where, 69% of respondents were from the U.S., 12% were European and 8% were Canadian. One third were from B2B non-agency companies, 28% from agencies, 17% B2C, and 21% did both B2B and 2C. Almost half, 45% were officers or owners, 36% were marketing or sales management, 9% were staff under those managers and 10% were 'other.' The largest portion, 37%, came from companies with less than 10 employees, 33% in the next category 10-100, 17% from 101-1000, and 13% from companies with more than 1000 employees.

Online Video Marketing Goals & Budgets

In terms of what the survey respondents were looking to do it was found that increasing brand awareness, online engagement, and lead generation were the main goals with 47%, 40%, and 40% respectively. From there it went on to customer education, increase website traffic, conversion rate lead nurturing and direct sales got just 18%.

One-third saw a 'significant' increase in their video marketing budget for this year with one-third saying it was insignificant and 29% saying it would be the same. Just 4% cited decreases of any sort and they were equally split between significant and not.

Online Video Marketing Effectiveness vs. Obstacles

In terms of the effectiveness of their online video marketing, just 17% said it was very successful and 60% said somewhat. In essence, 77% of respondents feel the online video marketing they do is effective. Then again, 23% say it's not successful. Those are the people I would like to single out and speak with to see what they are doing and help them fix those numbers.

The major obstacles respondents cited that stand in the way of effective online video marketing included lack of management buy-in, lack of effective strategy, lack of in-house resources - all in-house issues. However, they were pretty low numbers.

The industry-side of obstacles include distributing video content, attributing ROI to video. The top two issues were creating compelling content (46%), and a lack of budget for video (41%). I think that latter one can be directly attributed to the 36% who say it's hard to attach ROI to video.

Creating compelling content, I think, is just a matter of finding the right writers and production team to create video. A quarter did cite producing studio-quality video as an obstacle as well. To them and the rest that say compelling content is difficult, I would point to places like Poptent where you can put out a call for content and offer a certain number of buys for X number of dollars. If you are reading this and fall into any of the categories in this paragraph, go there. That is not a paid endorsement, they just happen to be on my radar. There are other places like userfarm, wooshii, etc. but I have had no dealings with them. I have spoken with, covered in articles, and maintain a profile on Poptent, for full disclosure purposes.

Effective Ways of Using Online Video Marketing

Now we get to the heart of the matter, what did they do, and more importantly, was it effective. In terms of what channels they used, the usual suspects show up, company or brand website, video sharing sites (YouTube), email, social networks, campaign landing pages, blogs and microblogs (like Twitter). Some also cited LinkedIn as a place they have done some video marketing which I suspect is the B2B crowd.

The vast majority is using company/brand websites (73%), or video sharing sites (70%). Email is still seeing a lot of use (65%) and just over half are using social networks (55%). After that is drops below half with landing page (44%), LinkedIn (33%), blogs (33%) and microblogs (25%).

What did they see as most effective?

Effectiveness, as related to achieving their specific goals, was vastly heavier in the places we have come to expect it to be, but the numbers are all quite low. While 65% are using email, just 25% see video email as most effective.While 70% are using video sharing sites, just 24% see it as most effective. While 73% are using company or brand websites to distribute their video, only 23% see it as most effective.

If they all have so little faith in the channels, is it any wonder why 41% have a 'lack of budget' for a proper online video marketing campaign?

Another interesting tidbit is that 37% use in-house resources only, hopefully not the 34% that said they lack in-house resources. It's probably 41% that said they lack a budget, they certainly wouldn't then be outsourcing.

Yet 51% said they use a combination of the two and 12% said they outsource all creation and implementation of video marketing campaigns.

It seems to me that we need to start working on better attribution of ROI to online video for starters. That shows up in almost every report as an obstacle to embracing online video marketing, increasing those budgets or expanding their campaigns. Once we have some sort of firm idea of the ROI then we can start working on the rest. If many don't see value in online video marketing, you'll never convince them to start doing it. If you have some case studies or reports on ROI please email them to me, I'm always happy to look at things for coverage here.

About the Author - Christophor Rick

Christophor Rick is a freelance writer specializing in technology, new media, video games, IPTV, online video advertising and consumer electronics. His past work has included press releases, copy-writing, travel writing and journalism. He also writes novel-length and short fiction as part of Three-Faced Media . View All Posts By - Christophor Rick